Twin Cities area sees surge in carjackings, putting drivers on edge

[iemanja]

Minneapolis has recorded nearly 500 carjackings this year, according to police. In 2019, the city logged 101 carjackings. Before that, the city did not break out these crimes specifically because they were so rare. . .

Last Monday, a 17-year-old had guns pointed at his chest and head in a carjacking at 6:30 p.m. in front of his house in south Minneapolis. The assailant ditched his car several blocks away.

Then on Friday, an armed hit-and-run suspect tried to carjack a woman in north Minneapolis as she was heading to the kickoff of the Twin Cities Salvation Army's annual Red Kettle Campaign, capping a week of more than 50 attempted or successful carjackings in the city.

Residents in Minneapolis, St. Paul and increasingly some suburban communities are experiencing a record surge in armed carjackings, crimes that are terrorizing victims, baffling police and putting motorists on edge.

https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-area-sees-surge-in-carjackings-putting-drivers-on-edge/600116335/

How much of this is the police refusing to do their jobs? And when is Frey going to make them do some work?

For once, I'm glad I have an old, crappy car that no one wants.

[TheRealNorth]

1. I wonder how much of this is gang initiation vs actual auto theft

A lot of newer cars have GPS and can be tracked. I can control the car doors and start my engine with my smart phone.

As for the Minneapolis PD, why would they want to stop it? They rather hide at the donut shop and pout about how no one respects them.

[iemanja]

2. Unsolved cases have doubled in the last year

My nephew, who worked at the state capitol until very recently, says it's because the police think that if they let crime rise they will get more funding.
This bullshit is among the reasons that I voted yes to 2.

[NowISeetheLight]

6. The reality is...

... There isn't a lot the cops can do. Remember "stop and frisk" in NYC? Crime dropped but it was profiling. Now cops are told they can't pull people over for busted license plate lights and stuff like that. What can the cops due to stop a carjacking?

From the Wikipedia article on carjacking in America.

The major U.S. city with the highest rates of carjacking as of 2014 was Detroit.[35] In 2008, Detroit had 1,231 carjackings, more than three a day.[35] By 2013, that number had fallen to 701, but this was still the highest known number of carjackings for any major city in the country.[35] The significant decrease in carjackings was credited to a coordinated effort by the Detroit Police Department, the FBI, and the local federal prosecutor's office.[35] Serial carjackers were targeted for federal prosecutions and longer sentences, and in 2009 the Detroit Police Department centralized all carjacking investigations and developed a suspect profiling system.[35] Through mid-November 2014, Detroit had 486 carjackings, down 31% from the year before, but this was still three times more than the carjackings experienced by New York City (which has ten times Detroit's population) in all of 2013.[35] Even James Craig, chief of police of the Detroit Police Department, was the victim of an attempted carjacking while he was in his police cruiser.[35]

They developed a "profiling system". That's a bad word to some people.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2014/11/30/detroit-police-fight-carjacking-crime/19671313/

Mpls PD has real staffing issues and honestly who would want to be a city cop today? I'd much rather be working in the suburbs where it's "safe". My Dad was a cop and a Police Chief in one of the outer Mpls suburbs. He retired 30 years ago and passed a few years back. He had 36 years in police work and was a good guy. But he dealt with a lot of the worst in people over the years too. He was injured several times including being shot in the face with a tear gas gun that left fragments in one of his eyes for the rest of his life (FOP Medal of Valor for that). Him and his partner managed to arrest the pair despite being hurt. I spent three years on a police reserve after the Navy planning to follow in his footsteps. I was in college and even back in the 80's Minnesota required an associates degree and POST certification to be an officer. But in three years I saw enough to make me realize that wasn't the job for me (that and personal health issues).

Mpls PD has lost a lot of officers in the last two years. Looking at the crime rate in Mpls who can blame them for leaving?

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/02/04/mpls-police-staffing-woes-worse-than-anticipated

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/minneapolis-pd-facing-20-force-reduction-due-to-officers-quitting/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12556

[iemanja]

7. They lost the ones

who were pissed off that Chauvin was prosecuted. Good riddance.

I've had two family members whose cars were stolen, and the police refused to in investigate in both cases. That is a major crime, but they can't be bothered to leave the station unless they can harass and kill people of color. They collect paychecks while refusing to work. They are worse than useless.

We have one of the worst police forces in America. The only way that happens is because they choose to make it that way. They don't answer calls by homeowners and small businesses. Don't tell me they can't do anything about it. They CHOOSE to do nothing.

[NowISeetheLight]

9. I have to respectfully disagree...

I don’t believe there is a conspiracy that involves the 580 or so police officers in Minneapolis. One that has them organized to not respond to any crimes. One that has them hiding out at the police station unless they can harass and kill African Americans.

There aren’t enough patrol officers to handle the 911 volume. KSTP has a nice article describing the challenges. It notes how one midwatch in North Minneapolis had four officers when the minimum is ten.

https://kstp.com/news/minneapolis-police-federation-union-head-reveals-extent-of-staffing-shortages-across-minneapolis/6170495/

Another article from last month states they’re now down over 300 officers. Retirements are now up 45% and resignations are up 18%.

https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/minneapolis-police-department-down-300-officers-from-spring-2020/

Meanwhile violent crime in the city has surged. Given the short staffing I can see why a property crime like a stolen car wouldn’t be investigated. The cars are either taken immediately to a chop shop (by a ring) or they’re dropped off later after being used. Some departments now use license plate scanners that alert the officer if a stolen car plate is picked up, but that’s about the extent of it. Auto theft in Mpls was up 41% in 2020 and do far 38% over that for 2021. On neighborhoodscout.com it notes there were 2960 car thefts in the city last year.

Check out the Mpls crime map for the last seven days. It’s awful. Everything on here is a police report. There are a lot of car thefts on the map. There is no way to investigate them all.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=576634548ffc4304bf9df0fb2b802f8d

Here is an article about six carjackings in Mpls in one night. It notes police were able to catch one of the cars as it was used in multiple aggravated robberies. So the police are doing something.

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/six-carjackings-reported-in-one-evening-in-minneapolis

[progree]

10. Ride-Along With A Minneapolis Police Officer Patrolling The North Side, WCCO, Oct 20

It made quite an impression on me.

Edit: here is the WCCO article and video:
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/10/20/ride-along-with-minneapolis-police-shows-how-staffing-shortages-have-officers-stretched-thin/

I was in the military during the Vietnam War, and we were all conspiring to kill babies back then. Otherwise, we refused to get out of our bunks. We ate a lot of donuts too

[NowISeetheLight]

11. North Mpls was bad when I was growing up

I remember when the vice lords gang moved up from Chicago to Mpls and brought more crime and violence with them. I used to play open hockey at Victory Memorial in N Mpls. I always drove straight in and out with no extra stops.

[progree]

12. I remember the crack house on Golden Valley Rd that the police demolished a wall with

a back hoe or some such.

I used to work downtown Mpls and live in Golden Valley in the 80's and early 90's. The bus went west out of downtown on Highway 55, north on Penn Ave. and west on Golden Valley Road, so I saw that house (it was more like a small 12-unit apartment building) 5 days a week, twice a day, as the bus went by it. I think it was left that way for something like 3 months.

[progree]

13. This is probably it -- Police Use Front-End Loader To Gain Entry Into Suspected Crack House

Police Use Front-End Loader To Gain Entry Into Suspected Crack House
January 19, 1988

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ Police used a piece of heavy construction equipment to ram their way into a heavily barricaded apartment building suspected of being a ?crack house? Monday, authorities said.

The front-end loader tore a hole through a wall of the building, and 10 people were arrested there and next door, police said.

?The crack houses in Minneapolis are heavily barricaded. You could spend half a day trying to get in one,? said Sgt. Harry Baltzer, head of the police narcotics unit. ?We used the best system we could come up with.?

https://apnews.com/article/6cd6ca0a3324aec96584e965db5b21e5

[iemanja]

14. One of the car thefts was a few years ago

A traffic cop actually caught someone driving the car, but the police refused to pursue it because they claimed they couldn't "prove" it wasn't borrowed, when my aunt had already reported it stolen. They couldn't bother to enforce grand theft, but let a black man drive with a broken tail light or pass a bad $20 bill, then his life is over. They choose to prioritize hassling people of color over enforcing major crimes.

In the more recent case, the car wound up in an impound lot. Of course they never bothered to call my cousin, the car's owner, to even alert her that it was there. She was checking herself on a daily basis, so she got her car back, but she never heard anything from the police. You say they are now too busy for that, but what about a few years ago when my aunt's car was stolen?

I recently saw a cop put on his sirens and lights in the target parking lot. There was no altercation is progress. I didn't see anything happening except one person who may have been driving the wrong way in the parking lot. That they have time for, but not grand theft or car jacking. It's about priorities.

If police refuse to answer calls about businesses and homes broken into, what is the point of having them? There are neighborhoods where the police refuse to come, like my neighborhood of Seward, which is hardly a bad area, and Uptown. The Somali businesses along Franklin have reported that repeated calls to police have gone unanswered. Notice that areas where there were protests are ignored. They are punishing us for the burning of the Third precinct, when it was a Boogaloo boy who did it. Crime has risen because criminals know they can act with impunity. There isn't a natural rise of that level in one year. Meanwhile, we have a mayor who refuses to compel the police to act. And for some reason I can't fathom, people voted him back in office.

[NowISeetheLight]

18. I've never heard of that...

... Stating they couldn't prove it wasn't borrowed. Was the driver a relative or something? I've heard about cases where they don't notify the owner of an impounded car (or they eventually send a letter). I watched an episode of Law and Order SVU today ("Gone&quot where Stabler and Benson found an impounded car two murders used. They were never notified because someone transposed two license numbers from the plate in the computer. Stuff like that happens. A lot of places (including Minneapolis) have an online search function for the impound lot and it's kind of left up to the owner to check themselves.

I've been pulled over for a non-functional tail light (last year when I lived out east). I'm a white guy and was driving a fairly new Jaguar at the time. I was in a nice neighborhood by my house and it was a sheriffs car that pulled me over. The officer was polite (and I was very polite) and he told me to get it fixed. Another officer pulled me over about a week later for speeding (on the same road). I wasn't paying attention and was going about 15mph over the limit. Again I was very polite, put my hands on the wheel, lowered all the windows so he could see inside, and I was treated nicely. He let me go with a warning. Both officers asked me almost immediately if it was my car. I think my Disabled Veteran license plates got me off since he thanked me for my service.

I did find some articles online about Mpls PD not going to certain areas so your concerns about that are valid. Property crimes probably aren't going to be handled promptly (or else done by phone). One city I read about last year actually had an online form to fill out if you're a property crime victim (they wouldn't go out for that).

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/05/02/even-when-residents-call-for-their-help-minneapolis-police-wont-go-near-38th-chicago/

https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/09/15/data-show-a-slower-less-proactive-minneapolis-police-department-since-george-floyd-killing/

I do hope things get better in Minneapolis. It was once a great city and I believe it can be again.

[Ocelot II]

3. There was an attempt just around the corner from me yesterday morning.

A helicopter was hovering overhead for quite awhile; a doorbell video clearly showing the incident was posted on Nextdoor. The object of the carjacking locked her door and leaned on the horn, and the four perps, who had been driving a white Corolla, took off on foot. The cops have caught three of them, so far. I doubt they'd want my 12-year-old car either, but I'm getting sick of this shit anyhow. At least this time the cops cared enough to send a helicopter and chase after the carjackers.

[iemanja]

4. I'm glad they responded

We've had some around here as well. My hairdresser in NE had two in their parking lot. They ended up moving the salon.

[dflprincess]

8. My car is also 12 and has a manual transmission (which is said to be a great anti-theft device)

Several months ago there was an article in the Strib about some guy who was yanked out of his car, the thief jumped it, drove about two feet, killed the engine, then jumped out and ran off. Yep, it was a manual. Fortunately the owner was not hurt.

[iemanja]

15. that's good to know about manuals

Still, how terrifying for the guy.

[geardaddy]

19. That was about two blocks from us.

I saw that video too. Looks like the white Corolla tried ramming the van and broke off the front driver's side wheel. That's when they fled on foot.

[Ocelot II]

20. Didn't know you lived near me!

[geardaddy]

21. We just moved in last year from CARAG.

[progree]

5. Meanwhile, catalytic converter thefts are way up... /nt

[iemanja]

16. Up 425% this year

according to this article: https://krocnews.com/catalytic-converter-thefts-in-minnesota-up-425-in-2021/

I guess it's the rhodium that they are after.

[progree]

17. In the Twin Cities: 40 in 2018, 4,000 this year. I wonder if old cars have any better luck

Probably not. From your article:

The group says the problem is especially acute in the Twin Cities, where Minneapolis and St. Paul are on pace to likely see nearly 4000 catalytic converter thefts this year. That represents a nearly 10,000 percent increase when compared to the 40 reports of stolen catalytic converters statewide in 2018. The statewide total this year is up 425 percent.